Le Suicide" redirects here. For the painting by Manet, see Le Suicidé.

Suicide
Author Émile Durkheim
Original title Le suicide
Country France
Language French
Subject Suicide
Publication date 1897
Media type Print
Suicide (French: Le suicide) is an 1897 book written by
French sociologist Émile Durkheim. It was the first methodological study of
a social fact in the context of society. It is ostensibly a case
study of suicide, a publication unique for its time that provided an example
of what the sociological monograph should look like.

Contents

[hide]

• 1 Types of suicide

• 2 Findings

• 3 Criticisms

• 3.1 Ecological fallacy

• 3.2 Catholics and Protestants

• 4 See also

• 5 References

• 6 Further reading

• 7 External links

Types of suicide[edit]
According to Durkheim,
the term suicide is applied to all cases of death resulting directly
or indirectly from a positive or negative act of the victim himself,
which he knows will produce this result.[1]
In his view, suicide comes in four kinds:
•Egoistic suicide reflects a prolonged sense of not belonging, of not
being integrated in a community. It results from the suicide's sense that
s/he has no tether. This absence can give rise to meaninglessness, apathy,
melancholy, and depression.[2] Durkheim calls such detachment
"excessive individuation". Those individuals who were not sufficiently
bound to social groups (and therefore well-defined values, traditions,
norms, and goals) were left with little social support or guidance, and were
therefore more likely to commit suicide. Durkheim found that suicide
occurred more often among unmarried people, especially unmarried men,
whom he found had less to bind and connect them to stable social norms
and goals.[3]
•Altruistic suicide is characterized by a sense of being overwhelmed by a
group's goals and beliefs.[4] It occurs in societies with high integration,
where individual needs are seen as less important than the society's needs
as a whole. They thus occur on the opposite integration scale as egoistic
suicide.[3] As individual interest would not be considered important,
Durkheim stated that in an altruistic society there would be little reason
for people to commit suicide. He described one exception: when the
individual is expected to kill her/himself on behalf of society, for example
in military service.
•Anomic suicide reflects an individual's moral confusion and lack of social
direction, which is related to dramatic social and economic upheaval. [5] It
is the product of moral deregulation and a lack of definition of legitimate
aspirations through a restraining social ethic, which could impose meaning
and order on the individual conscience. This is symptomatic of a failure of
economic development and division of labour to produce
Durkheim's organic solidarity. People do not know where they fit in within
their societies. Durkheim explains that this is a state of moral disorder
where people do not know the limits on their desires and are constantly in
a state of disappointment. This can occur when they go through extreme
changes in wealth; while this includes economic ruin, it can also include
windfall gains – in both cases, previous expectations from life are brushed
aside and new expectations are needed before they can judge their new
situation in relation to the new limits.
•Fatalistic suicide occurs when a person is excessively regulated, when
their futures are pitilessly blocked and passions violently choked by
oppressive discipline.[6] It is the opposite of anomic suicide, and occurs in
societies so oppressive their inhabitants would rather die than live on. For
example, some prisoners might prefer to die than live in a prison with
constant abuse and excessive regulation.
These four types of suicide are based on the degrees of imbalance of two
social forces: social integration and moral regulation.[3] Durkheim noted
the effects of various crises on social aggregates – war, for example,
leading to an increase in altruism, economic boom or disaster contributing
to anomie.[7]
Findings[edit]
Durkheim concluded that:
•Suicide rates are higher in men than women (although married women
who remained childless for a number of years ended up with a high suicide
rate).
•Suicide rates are higher for those who are single than those who are in a
sexual relationship.
•Suicide rates are higher for people without children than people with
children.
•Suicide rates are higher among Protestants than Catholics and Jews.
•Suicide rates are higher among soldiers than civilians.
•Suicide rates are higher in times of peace than in times of war (For
example, the suicide rate in France fell after the coup d'etat of Louis-
Napoléon Bonaparte. War also reduced the suicide rate: after war broke
out in 1866 between Austria and Italy, the suicide rate fell by 14% in both
countries.).
•Suicide rates are higher in Scandinavian countries.
•The higher the education level, the more likely it was that an individual
would choose suicide. However, Durkheim established that there is more
correlation between an individual's religion and suicide rate than an
individual's education level. Jewish people were generally highly educated
but had a low suicide rate.

Criticisms[edit]
Ecological fallacy[edit]
Durkheim stands accused of committing an ecological fallacy.[8][9] Indeed,
Durkheim's conclusions about individual behaviour (e.g. suicide) are based
on aggregate statistics (the suicide rate among Protestants and Catholics).
This type of inference, which explains micro events in terms
of macro properties, is often misleading, as Simpson's paradox shows.[10]
However, diverging views have contested whether Durkheim's work really
contained an ecological fallacy. Van Poppel and Day (1996) argue that
differences in reported suicide rates between Catholics and Protestants
could be explained entirely in terms of how these two groups record
deaths. Protestants would record "sudden deaths" and "deaths from ill-
defined or unspecified cause" as suicides, while Catholics would not. If so,
then Durkheim's error was empirical, not logical.[11] Inkeles (1959),
[12]Johnson (1965),[13] and Gibbs (1968)[14] claimed that Durkheim only
intended to explain suicide sociologically, within a holisticperspective,
emphasizing that "he intended his theory to explain variation among social
 environments in the incidence of suicide, not the suicides of particular
individuals".[15]
More recently, Berk (2006) questions the micro-macro relations underlying
criticisms of Durkheim's work. He notices that
Durkheim speaks of a "collective current" that reflects the
collective inclination flowing down the channels of social
organization. The intensity of the current determines the volume
of suicides ... Introducing psychological [i.e. individual] variables
such as depression, [which could be seen as] an independent
[non-social] cause of suicide, overlooks Durkheim's conception
that these variables are the ones most likely to be effected by the
larger social forces and without these forces suicide may not
occur within such individuals.[16]

Catholics and Protestants[edit]

Durkheim explores the differing suicide rates among Protestants and
Catholics, arguing that stronger social control among Catholics results in
lower suicide rates. According to Durkheim, Catholic society has normal
levels of integration while Protestant society has low levels.
There are at least two problems with this interpretation. First, Durkheim
took most of his data from earlier researchers, notably Adolph
Wagner and Henry Morselli,[17] who were much more careful in
generalizing from their own data. Second, later researchers found that the
Protestant-Catholic differences in suicide seemed to be limited to German-
speaking Europe and thus may always have been the spurious reflection of
other factors.[18] Despite its limitations, Durkheim's work on suicide has
influenced proponents of control theory, and is often mentioned[by
whom?] as a classic sociological study.

See also[edit]

• Books portal

• Sociology portal
•Antipositivism
•Positivism

References[edit]
1. Jump up^ W. S. F. Pickering; Geoffrey Walford; British Centre for Durkheimian
Studies (2000). Durkheim's Suicide: a century of research and debate. Psychology
Press. p. 25. ISBN 978-0-415-20582-5. Retrieved 13 April 2011.
2. Jump up^ Harriford, Diane Sue; Thomson, Becky W. (2008). When the Center is on
Fire : Passionate Social Theory for Our Times. Austin: University of Texas Press.
p. 165. ISBN 978-0-292-71775-6.
3. ^ Jump up to:a b c Thompson, Kenneth (1982). Emile Durkheim. London: Tavistock
Publications. pp. 109–111. ISBN 0-85312-419-1.
4. Jump up^ Harriford, Diane Sue; Thomson, Becky W. (2008). When the Center is on
Fire : Passionate Social Theory for Our Times. Austin: University of Texas Press.
p. 166. ISBN 978-0-292-71775-6.
5. Jump up^ Harriford, Diane Sue; Thomson, Becky W. (2008). When the Center is on
Fire : Passionate Social Theory for Our Times. Austin: University of Texas Press.
p. 163. ISBN 978-0-292-71775-6.
6. Jump up^ Harriford, Diane Sue; Thomson, Becky W. (2008). When the Center is on
Fire : Passionate Social Theory for Our Times. Austin: University of Texas Press.
p. 167. ISBN 978-0-292-71775-6.
7. Jump up^ Dohrenwend, Bruce P. (1959). "Egoism, Altruism, Anomie, and Fatalism: A
Conceptual Analysis of Durkheim's Types". American Sociological Review. 24 (4):
473.
8. Jump up^ Freedman, David A. (2002). "The Ecological Fallacy". University of
California.
9. Jump up^ Selvin, H. C. (1965). "Durkheim's Suicide: Further Thoughts on a
Methodological Classic". In Nisbet, R. A. Émile Durkheim : Selected Essays. Prentice-
Hall. pp. 113–136. OCLC 883981793.
10.Jump up^ Irzik, Gurol; Meyer, Eric (1987). "Causal Modeling: New Directions for
Statistical Explanation". Philosophy of Science. 54 (4): 509.
11.Jump up^ Van Poppel, Frans; Day, Lincoln H. (1996). "A Test of Durkheim's Theory
of Suicide—Without Committing the Ecological Fallacy". American Sociological
Review. 61 (3): 500.
12.Jump up^ Cf. Inkeles, A. (1959). "Personality and Social Structure". In Merton, R. K.;
Broom, L.; Cottrell, L. S. Sociological Today. New York: Basic Books. pp. 249–76.
13.Jump up^ Cf. Johnson, B. D. (1965). "Durkheim's One Cause of Suicide". American
Sociological Review. 30: 875–86.
14.Jump up^ Cf. Gibbs, J. P.; Martin, W. T. (1958). "A Theory of Status Integration and
Its Relationship to Suicide". American Sociological Review. 23 (2): 140–
147. JSTOR 2088997.
15.Jump up^ Berk, Bernard B. (2006). "Macro-Micro Relationships in Durkheim's
Analysis of Egoistic Suicide". Sociological Theory. 24 (1): 58–80 [p.
60]. doi:10.1111/j.0735-2751.2006.00264.x.
16.Jump up^ Berk, Bernard B. (2006). "Macro-Micro Relationships in Durkheim's
Analysis of Egoistic Suicide". Sociological Theory. 24 (1): 58–80 [pp. 78–
79]. doi:10.1111/j.0735-2751.2006.00264.x.
17.Jump up^ Stark, Rodney; Bainbridge, William Sims (1996). Religion, Deviance and
Social Control. Routledge. p. 32.
18.Jump up^ Pope, Whitney; Danigelis, Nick (1981). "Sociology's One Law". Social
Forces. 60: 496–514.
Further reading[edit]
•Durkheim, Emile (1897) [1951]. Suicide : a study in sociology. The Free
Press. ISBN 0-684-83632-7.
•Pickering, W.S.F.; Walford, Geoffrey (2000). Durkheim's Suicide: A Century
of Research and Debate. Routledge. ISBN 978-0415205825.

External links